Bend and Beyond

It seems like forever since we last be writing. We spent six weeks in Bend, and I have to ask forgiveness of all those friends we wanted to spend time with, truly intended to see, and didn’t. Dave was gone a week on Bicycle Idaho, I took my mother on a week’s trip, and the rest of the time seemed to be taken up with the yearly doctor visits, dental appointments and many, many hours resolving the tax situation which resulted from the sale of Q Photo.

Bend didn’t feel like coming home. We don’t miss our old houses, and are overwhelmed by the growth and changes. It strikes us that Bend now resembles Palm Springs, only with more entertainment.

We are now on our new job, just started, and staying at Millersylvania State Park, south of Olympia, WA. Here’s how it works. We are independent contractors, working for Southeast Publications out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We design and sell site maps for RV parks, marinas, fairgrounds, any facility that requires a map to lead the visitor where they want to go. We contact the facility (mostly RV parks for us right now) and negotiate to make a map for them in exchange for up to two and a half weeks free space in their park. They do not have to pay for the maps. We calculate how many they need for a year and promise them one year’s worth. The map has a diagram of the spaces, buildings, etc on the front, usually has the rules and maybe local history on the back, and the inside has a map of the area, surrounded by 14 to 18 ads for businesses and services in the local area. It’s an 11 x 17, folded in the middle. Dave is Map Guy, I’m the traveling salesman.

We got our training from our new managers in Black Diamond, WA, at Sawyer Lake Resort. They are very successful, and like a lot of Southeast Publishing Reps, they are full time RVers, but are hardly retired. They are about 50, work steadily for about 9 to 10 months a year, and make an average of $150,000. The commissions are very good. You need to sell about 5 to 6 ads to make the cost of printing; 65% of what’s left is the rep’s commission. A number of RVers work a park, sell 7 ads, and give up. They just like the free RV space. The company prints the maps, filling it up with “proud to be an american” or stats on how long it takes plastic to break down in the dump, or something. We don’t think that is fair to the company, and we want the money, so we’re working.

We are at Millersylvania State Park because Southeast Pub has a contract with the State Parks in Washington, and they need maps. It’s good to have a renewal job to start on, but State Parks are reportedly hard jobs to do because they aren’t color (the State wants recycled paper), they need a large volume and have to be pocket folded (high production costs to meet). This park has 48 RV sites and 138 camping sites and they could have put us almost anywhere, but we got lucky and ended up in the volunteer’s space, a beautiful little meadow ringed by tall cedars, up the road from the park at the District Park Headquarters. Because of the trees, we have no telephone service in the bus, so I go out in the middle of the meadow to make my calls.

I haven’t done direct sales for a long time, but I have always kind of liked it. I was very successful at selling telephones when I worked for Ma Bell. I didn’t do very well selling cemetery lots – just couldn’t close a sale. Would sit there for hours talking to little old people, but couldn’t seem to ask them to buy. When I was young and slim and relatively virgin, I did very well selling maternity clothes, of all things. I like meeting people and I really believe in the product, we use site maps whenever we can—they help us locate the grocery, the laundromat, etc. Fortunately, Dave doesn’t mind driving me around. He has a good sense of direction, and he’s really good with the maps.
Some general observations this first week: It’s hard to make a presentation to an Asian lady who doesn’t know what an RV is, let alone a site map. If a store that calls itself the Redneck Store has a sign on the door that says NO SOLICITING, they probably mean it.

When we finish up here in about 10 days we go down the road to Centralia to an RV park that looks like it might have a funk factor of seven. We have a couple of advertisers who could be in both site maps (casinos and RV dealers) so I will try to do them at one sitting. Weâ™ll see. I am so enthusiastic they are having a hard time turning me down. They are, of course, but I can tell it’s hard on them.

We spent time last weekend with son Kevin and his Shelly and Morgan Ann who is 13 now. How did that happen? She will be driving before we know it. It was great to see them. Kevin was having a weekend with his old high school pals – five of them have remained close. We laughed so hard we hurt.
It’s all good, friends. We send our love to all.

Sam